Left Navigation Lower

You are here

Central Ohio Community Investing in 100 Gig Fiber Network for City Connections, Economic Development

Hilliard, Ohio (pop. 36,000), is moving forward with plans to deploy a carrier neutral dark fiber network after city council approved funds for the project last month. The 25-mile fiber network will connect government buildings and businesses in the Columbus suburb and will be capable of speeds up to 100 Gigabits per second, reports Columbus Business First. Officials hope that improving Hilliard’s broadband infrastructure will help the community attract and retain businesses, encourage local economic development, and reduce municipal connectivity costs.

Deployment Details

During the first phase of the project, Hilliard will run fiber to municipal buildings and local businesses. The carrier neutral network will connect to the Metro Data Center in nearby Dublin, Ohio (home to DubLINK), giving the city government and businesses access to a wide selection of providers, who will have the ability to lease fiber from the city. In the future, the network could expand to serve other entities, such as local schools. The city does not plan to connect residents.

The total cost of the network’s initial phase is $3.17 million; to fund the fiber rollout, Hilliard City Council set aside $2.9 million in January as part of the city’s capital improvements budget. This included a $1.25 million loan from the Franklin County Infrastructure Bank, which has also invested in two similar projects, including Grove City. Hilliard Economic Development Director David Meadows said that the remainder of the funding comes from a conduit and traffic signal project that was approved in the city’s 2018 budget.

Economic Benefits for the City

Like many communities, the city of Hilliard is investing in a municipal fiber network to strengthen and grow the local economy. Currently, the community’s limited options for Internet access pose a concern to prospective companies. “We’ve had some businesses express issues with connectivity here,” Meadows explained to Columbus Business First.

Additionally, the new network will help Hilliard improve connectivity in municipal buildings while lowering the cost. In an email, Meadows said:

“With the connection into the data center, the city was able to competitively bid to other carriers that not only gives us 10 times the bandwidth, but at a fraction of our current cost.”

Feeds

Random Quote

I’m very familiar with many government owned telecom operations throughout the world, over many years, and across many different forms of government, and I can tell you that governments generally do not subsidize publicly owned telecommunications. They milk telecommunications - these systems generate a lot of revenue.